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ITS RELATION TO THE INCREASED VENOUS PRESSURE OF MYOCARDIAL FAILURE

A. CARLTON ERNSTENE, M.D.; HERRMAN L. BLUMGART, M.D.

Arch Intern Med. 1930;45(4):593-610.

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text PDF and any section headings.

The factors that impel patients with myocardial failure of the congestive type to sit up in bed in order to breathe more comfortably have aroused the curiosity of many investigators. Numerous theories of the pathogenesis of orthopnea have been advanced, but none completely accounts for all the characteristics of the phenomenon.

REVIEW OF THE LITERATURE

The earlier writers generally believed that the sitting posture was assumed because the accessory muscles of inspiration could then be used to greater advantage. Hofbauer,¹ however, showed that the chief respiratory difficulty in orthopneic patients was expiratory rather than inspiratory, and that the accessory muscles of expiration did not function more efficiently in the upright posture. According to him,² the orthopneic position provides relief because it secures the following mechanical advantages: 1. The lower position of the diaphragm and the consequent increased capacity of the thorax increases the elastic tension of the lungs and so . . . [Full Text PDF of this Article]

Author Affiliations
BOSTON

From the Thorndike Memorial Laboratory, Boston City Hospital, the Medical Research Laboratories, Beth Israel Hospital and the Department of Medicine, Harvard Medical School.

Footnotes
Submitted for publication, Sept. 6, 1929.

Read in abstract before the American Society for Clinical Investigation, Atlantic City, N. J., May 6, 1929.

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